by Tim Berry

It’s about time that business writers, assorted experts, entrepreneurs, academic and the rest start focusing on the huge damaging and wasteful misunderstanding that most of us have contributed to: that completely out-of-date idea that a business plan is a document, done once, related to raising money. So I’m delighted to see Seth Godin jumping onto... Read More »

by Tim Berry

Jonathan calls this collection The 7 Keynote MBA: How to Save 2 Years and $100,000. A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but there’s certainly a lot of education here. And if some posts are great reading, this one is great watching. Jonathan has collected seven of the best-ever videos about small business, small business marketing,... Read More »

by Tim Berry

I’d like to think that business education should be about education more than business. It should be about leadership, perspective, and vision, more than about analysis, buzzwords, jobs, and salaries. But is it? Or is that just the kind of high-sounding stuff we write when looking back, years later? I’ve seen two important pieces on... Read More »

by Tim Berry

What happens if you make light of your achievements, shun the spotlight, and pass the microphone on to the next person in line? Will this stunt your career growth? I’ve worried about this for years. I used to deal with a guy who did very well as a professional expert, while knowing not much more... Read More »

by Tim Berry

A couple of weeks ago I posted “bad research is worse than no research at all” on Twitter. Some thoughts, like that one, fit perfectly well in 140 characters. And it seems like a useful one too. And true. The reasons for that statement seem pretty obvious to me. Better to know what you don’t... Read More »

by Tim Berry

Honestly, except for the name itself, I’ve never cared or wondered whether the author of Men With Pens was man or woman. It’s a good blog for writers. I did assume man, of course, because of the name of the blog, and the byline. This isn’t something I think about. But I was shocked to... Read More »

by Tim Berry

Even if you don’t have a website, blog, Facebook page, Yahoo! or Google listing, it’s still not too late. It really isn’t. That’s what they said in 1999, and again in 2005, and every day. The future just keeps on coming, day after day. Jump on now, and you can look back later. Seth Godin,... Read More »

by Tim Berry

You could call this post the taxonomy of trolls. I thought there were fairy-tale creatures, ugly and mean, living under a bridge, interfering with innocent travelers. It turns out, though, they’re real. Just like in the three billy goats gruff fairy tale, they are hiding along the way, jumping out to cause trouble. I like... Read More »

by Tim Berry

There can be great truth in stories. People have communicated in stories from the very beginning. We use stories to tell about God, family, each other, and business. Stories can be true or false by the message they carry, not just what happens in the story. Fables, parables, short stories … think about how much... Read More »

by Tim Berry

Just a few years ago I was mourning the loss of the printed word in our media-hungry and web-hungry society. Even people I really respect, although most of them much younger than I, were starting to show cavalier disregard for the English language. I’d grimace while reading something that mistook then for than, or they’re... Read More »

About Me

About Me

I'm chairman and founder of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com (this site). Founder or co-founder of several others, ranging from successful to failure and in-between. I have more info at timberry.com. And you can find me on Wikipedia too.